


Impact

by violenteer



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 02:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13448970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violenteer/pseuds/violenteer
Summary: Tim Drake spent most of his time alone. Others noticed.





	Impact

Tim Drake was alone, most of the time.

It was how he’d kept himself since he learned his presence was unwanted and unnecessary, back home. His mother was too caught in her own frivolity, his father cherishing almost everything that would usually wait to follow the importance of family for a long, long time. Tim was an only child. He had friends, but it wasn’t difficult to lose them.

Besides; it wasn’t easy to flicker from one shadow to the next with company in tow. And Tim liked to do that. To flicker. He’d learned it from the man who lived and breathed shadow, but Tim thought that he made it his own after a while. Just him and the darkness and the whining streets of Gotham and no one else.

No one else. Not one soul for lonely Tim Drake to find solace in.

Although, Tim chose to be alone.

Cassandra would stand quietly behind him and when he noticed her, her arms would wrap tightly around Tim’s middle. Hold him close. Crush him like a compactor. Tim liked it. He liked having a family and a purpose and people to rely on.

But that didn’t keep him from calmly extricating himself and grappling back down to earth.

And when Tim came home in the early hours of the morning with the tired sun slanted against him, he would see Dick in the Cave. And Dick seemed like he couldn’t get enough of people. He would drag Tim into a chair and force feed him and ruffle his hair and talk about the small, important stuff that life could be made of if it wasn’t filled with fighting and danger and hardened resolution. Tim liked that, too. Almost as much as he liked Cassandra’s firm comfort.

There was still necessity in twisting away, finding more shadow. More solace. More silence.

Jason wasn’t someone Tim counted on to be there. To ease that nagging loneliness that Tim tried and failed to call his own. They weren’t on patrol, either. Tim was in the heart of Gotham when Jason found him. In a club, because sometimes Tim needed to lose himself in an impersonal throng of sweat and breath and gyration.

Hands on his hips was unexpected. Tim looked back, and Jason’s gaze was steady. He yelled something sharp over the sonic boom of house music. Tim tipped his head, leaned against his older brother, and danced. One song was enough for the both of them to get the picture.

When everything was done, Tim wound up on his own once more. 

He made his way to Metropolis once. To find Kon. It was supposed to be for a mission, but Tim knew in the back of his mind that that wasn’t the truth. And when he was in front of his old teammate, all Tim could do was stammer before he fell into Kon’s chest, asking without words that Kon held just as surely and firmly as Tim was gripped onto him. As Cass had done before, without her words. As Dick tried to do sometimes with too much conversation. As Jason would never attempt.

Tim Drake was alone, most of the time. But there were also times when he chose not to be. When he no longer could be; when he was shown that he didn't have to be.


End file.
